The present invention relates to a modulized antenna sleeve, and more particularly, to the modulized antenna sleeve that can be used for installing an antenna on an equipment housing briefly and reliably.
In the communication products, the main function of an antenna is to transmit and receive signals. The antenna fixed to the communication product often needs rotating so as to obtain the optimum efficacy of transmitting and receiving signals, and additionally, the antenna exposed is vulnerable to the external impact, and the production cost of the antenna and related components has to be greatly reduced for gaining the market competitiveness. Hence, the mechanism design for fixing an antenna to a communication product has to posses the features of endurance; no entanglement of the conductive wires connected to the antenna while the antenna is rotated; and low cost.
Referring to FIG. 1, FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram showing the assembly of the conventional antenna fixed to an equipment housing, wherein an antenna 10 is installed on an equipment housing 30 of a communication product via a metal cylindrical tube 20 used as an antenna holder formed on the sidewall of the equipment housing 30. While in mass production, the degree of tightness of the metal cylindrical tube 20 is not stable in quality and is not easy to meet the requirement of quality control, so that the metal cylindrical tube 20 and the equipment housing 30 are easy to be detached from the connection area thereof. Additionally, tolerating problems always exists in the production of every lot of metal cylindrical tubes, thus causing the inconsistent degree of tightness between the antenna and the metal cylindrical tube. Generally, the efficacy of tightness will be quite different even with only 0.1 mm difference of tolerance. Hence, the conventional metal cylindrical tube 20 has low production reliability. The antennas of different brands in the market have different sizes, and even the difference of about 0.1 mm would make the metal cylindrical tube fail to fit the antenna, and thus another metal cylindrical tube of different size needs to be used, therefore increasing the difficulty level of purchasing components.
Further, referring to FIG. 2, FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram showing the mechanism related to the rotation angle of the conventional antenna. After being installed on the equipment housing 30, the antenna 10 has to be rotatable but with being restricted generally to 180 degree of angle, or the conductive wires (not shown) connected to the antenna 10 would be entangled. However, the metal cylindrical tube 20 as shown in FIG. 1 does not have the rotation-limiting design, and thus a rib element 42 has to be added to the cover 40 to block a protrusion element 12 of an antenna connecting element 14 for preventing the antenna 10 from over-rotation, and yet the rib element 42 makes the communication product lack integrality of appearance.
Referring to FIG. 3, FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram showing the assembly of the other conventional antenna fixed to an equipment housing, wherein the other conventional antenna 10 is inserted into a plastic antenna-mounting hole 22 so as to be installed on the equipment housing 30 of the communication product. The plastic antenna-mounting hole 22 is formed on the sidewall of the equipment housing 30, and is fixed on the bottom of the equipment housing 30 by using a supporting foot 24a and a supporting foot 24b. However, the structure of the plastic antenna-mounting hole 22 is quite complicated, and the requirement for the precision of molding tools and processing is high, and further the mechanism for preventing the antenna 10 from over-rotation has to be designed additionally, so that it is very inconvenient in using and manufacturing the conventional plastic antenna-mounting hole 22.
It is worthy to be noted that, in accordance with different antenna products, different molding tools have to be made for manufacturing each of the aforementioned components, such as the metal cylindrical tube 20 shown in FIG. 1 or the plastic antenna-mounting hole 22 shown in FIG. 3. Hence, not only those components are not sharable in use, but also the development expense of the molding tools occupies a great portion of the total production cost thereof. Moreover, since the structure of the molding tools for manufacturing the plastic antenna-mounting hole 22 is complicated, the expense needed for these molding tools is even higher. With the addition of other processing costs, the metal cylindrical tube 20 and the plastic antenna-mounting hole 22 both do not have competition edge in the market.
Hence, there is an urgent need to develop a modulized antenna sleeve for promoting reliability, lower production cost, preventing the antenna from over-rotation and increasing sharable possibility, so as to overcome the shortcomings of the conventional metal cylindrical tube and plastic antenna mounting hole.
In view of the aforementioned background of invention, since the conventional metal cylinder tube and plastic antenna-mounting hole have the disadvantages of low reliability, high production cost and the communication product lacking integrality of appearance.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide a modulized antenna sleeve for promoting reliability; lowering production cost; and enhancing sharable possibility, etc., so that the modulized antenna sleeve is suitable for use in equipment housings (made of plastic or metal) of various thickness, and further the antenna installed can be prevented from over-rotation with maintaining the integrality of the appearance of the communication product.
In accordance with the aforementioned object, the present invention provides a modulized antenna sleeve used for installing an antenna on a base hole of an equipment housing, wherein at least one pair of folded portions are formed on the surrounding of the base hole, and the modulized antenna sleeve comprises: a hollow base member and a tubular main body located on a first surface of the hollow base member, wherein a through hole penetrates the hollow base member and the tubular main body, and the outer surface of the sidewall of the tubular main body has at least one pair of clipping hook elements, each of the clipping hook elements corresponding to each of the folded portions, each of the clipping hook elements comprising: a hook supporting portion, located on the first surface of the hollow base member, and on a second surface of the tubular main body adjacent to the first surface; and a hook portion, located on a surface of the hook supporting portion opposite to the first surface of the hollow base member, wherein the hook portion can be engaged with the folded portion. Moreover, the modulized antenna sleeve comprises: a rotation-blocking element, formed on a surface of the hollow base member opposite to the first surface, for restricting the rotation of the antenna within the range of an angle, wherein the antenna has a protrusion element, by which the antenna can stop rotating by the rotation-blocking element while the antenna is being rotated towards the aforementioned angle.